T_Dawg
Enthusiast
Silver Level
Here are a few rules I live by:
Never bet large on just a pair. It's a minefield when you realize anyone could have a set. I avoid raising the stakes in most cases unless I have a Straight or better. But it's ok to call a bet, and probably unavoidable.
Never bet large on just a pair. It's a minefield when you realize anyone could have a set. I avoid raising the stakes in most cases unless I have a Straight or better. But it's ok to call a bet, and probably unavoidable.
AizenFalck
Legend
Bronze Level
That they learn to play poker as well as possible, a good serious strategy, watch videos of professional players, read books related to poker and at the same time play freerolls that ensure that they do not have any type of loss while they learn to play well. Another good tip would be, be patient, no one learns to play poker overnight, and just being a beginner's luck once, that does not mean that you are already a professional player so be careful when launching into the big leagues without consider possible losses.
C
Chel_nv
Rock Star
Silver Level
V
vittopio
Visionary
Silver Level
Learn a lot and treat poker as a business! This is quite enough to earn money on limits up to nl 50!
hubcio96
Rock Star
Bronze Level
1. Freerolls - play them like you would have played for the main event - have a mindset of playing to win, not playing to make money (or since a freeroll, not losing any money)
2. Bankroll - play within your limits, but if you ar result-oriented - count your winning in Big Blinds (an in tourney entries), not actual money. It's easy to jump into higher stakes because you want to make some money - once you bring good results in your micro stakes, you will be better equipped for bigger games, without losing $500 a not (unfortunately, talking from experience).
3. Patience - getting good at poker is like losing weight - it takes patience, consistency, and PLAN - you can take fat loss pills, but they are not healthy, and not long-term results-oriented. Just like you don't want to lose weight this month - you want to be healthier for the rest of your life, you don't want to be a winning player for a month - you want to be a winning player for the rest of your hobby career - patience, have a plan, learn, and apply.
4. Have a plan for each session - especially during learning times - get 2-4 goals, to accomplish, and do it. You do them long enough they will become good habits.
5. Learn basic game skills before moving on to more advanced theories.
6. Start with a solid understanding of Pre-flop strategy and when to bet etc. Once you have that you will cut your mistakes by 80%. It may be a "bearing poker" when you fold 80% of your hands, but "Boring poker" is good for newbies. The more chips you have, the more you will get when you go all-in with a monster and get called. With chips, it's not just "offense" and "invest" your chips into a pot - it's also about defense, knowing when to protect your stack.
MOST IMPORTANT RULE - IF YOU NOT HAVING FUN, YOU DOING IT WRONG!!!
2. Bankroll - play within your limits, but if you ar result-oriented - count your winning in Big Blinds (an in tourney entries), not actual money. It's easy to jump into higher stakes because you want to make some money - once you bring good results in your micro stakes, you will be better equipped for bigger games, without losing $500 a not (unfortunately, talking from experience).
3. Patience - getting good at poker is like losing weight - it takes patience, consistency, and PLAN - you can take fat loss pills, but they are not healthy, and not long-term results-oriented. Just like you don't want to lose weight this month - you want to be healthier for the rest of your life, you don't want to be a winning player for a month - you want to be a winning player for the rest of your hobby career - patience, have a plan, learn, and apply.
4. Have a plan for each session - especially during learning times - get 2-4 goals, to accomplish, and do it. You do them long enough they will become good habits.
5. Learn basic game skills before moving on to more advanced theories.
6. Start with a solid understanding of Pre-flop strategy and when to bet etc. Once you have that you will cut your mistakes by 80%. It may be a "bearing poker" when you fold 80% of your hands, but "Boring poker" is good for newbies. The more chips you have, the more you will get when you go all-in with a monster and get called. With chips, it's not just "offense" and "invest" your chips into a pot - it's also about defense, knowing when to protect your stack.
MOST IMPORTANT RULE - IF YOU NOT HAVING FUN, YOU DOING IT WRONG!!!
jordanbillie
Legend
Bronze Level
Invest your time developing a low risk approach in which you can extract whatever value comes your way. Find the games that require little investment with the potential for large returns. After you have found the best possible schedule to play, work on your game. Work on always finding the areas where your opponents are playing sub-optimally, and come up with low-risk ways in which you can exploit these situations. Understand that poker goes way beyond your cards.
Jon Poker
Legend
Silver Level
speaking in a sense of someone who would be almost entirely new to poker i would separate things into two scenarios.
If you want to play for fun and as a hobby - study all of the hand rankings and engrave them into your brain. Second, learn all of table positions - followed by CONSTANT study of all of your proper opening ranges. Third, do a little research on proper bet sizing and what it has to do with your stack depth. Fourth - dive on in and enjoy yourself - only play the stakes you can afford to lose.
The second scenario would be for someone looking to take the game seriously and try to generate some income from it even if it is only played as a hobby and recreationally.
First - if you dont know the hand rankings, table position and proper opening ranges -- study that hard until you have it down packed by memory. These are the basics, to further grow your game you MUST know these.
As you begin playing - practice good bankroll management. Never invest more than you can afford to lose as a whole. For MTTs I would recommend 100-150 buy ins of your tournament level. For cash games around 50-60 buy ins is generally acceptable for a minimum. Secondly practice good game selection - this means find the best bang for your buck structures, the softest fields - find a few games you can crush and then play them relentlessly!! I would also advise any new players to begin their journeys in the micros - the lowest level you site (or sites) of choice has to offer. If you cannot beat the worst players in the fields - moving up will only cause you to hemorrhage money. Consider it a right of passage. By all means if you can afford to dive right into $22 and $33 MTTs - have at it, but if you cant beat those little $1 games - the mid stakes fields will eat you alive. This is just the harsh reality of things.
Moving on - - Once you have the basics down -buy yourself holdem manager or poker tracker 4 -- you will need to log your hands to evaluate your play and move onto other steps to improve your game - which leads me to my next point of advice -- dedicate at least 2 days a week to studying the game.
Little point of tracker program advice - I wouldn't worry about using a HUD unless you have a pretty decent feel and understanding of the game -- trying to look at and deduce tendencies from stats will do you no good if you dont fully understand what you are looking at and why it either is or isn't important. I had pt4 for 2 years before I ever used the HUD and even today I only utilize about 6 stats.
To study and improve - you will need some sort of source to find out what is generally acceptable and what is not -- you're already here and this is a great place for most of that content. So, when you begin to study - make a list of 3 - 5 things you would like to improve on im your game -- keep them next to your PC while you play and work on those points hard until you have them down to your liking. Cross something off the list and move on until you have something new you would like to learn/improve on. We cannot evaluate our play and SEE what we are doing without the tracker programs - so this is a MUST have tool for anyone looking to take their game seriously.
Soak up all the content you can, dedicate yourself to becoming better at this game. If you do not commit, you simply will not succeed. This game is not for everyone and will test your mental fortitude on the daily basis - if you are not ready to handle that, perhaps you should play moreso for fun. The swings are real, and they happen to EVERYONE. So make sure you mentally understand what you are getting into. There are tons of great books on poker mentality and tilt. I firmly do not believe there is a "one size fits all" solution to tilt - we as humans are unique and each individual differs from the other. We may be cut from the same cloth, but we are not all the same and so I don't believe that the same solutions work for 100% of everyone else. This will be trial and error for you to find out what works best in your case.
Lastly as you improve and you imurse yourself in this game - when you finally do start winning -- and if you work hard enough, play correctly and follow the basic math (ie:: getting your money in good over and over) -- then you will win over the long term - take those winnings, be prideful and invest in yourself!! Buy another piece of helpful software like ICMizer for MTT players, or Poker Snowie for the cash grinders, etc -- these tools will only help you become even better over your journey. If you feel like you have learned all you can on your own - get coaching or sign up for a training site. Coaching was personally the best thing i ever could've done for my poker game..
Investing in yourself doesn't always have to be new things to help your poker game grow - buy yourself something nice once in a while. Buy a new monitor, a new pair of shoes, a new pc, a nice dinner, etc - its nice to reap the rewards for all of your hard work, you should be able to enjoy some of it. After all, you earned it!
I know this is long and probably a bit ranty - but overall, I hope it comes across helpful. Thanks for reading - good luck at the tables!
Edit::: One more final piece of advice -- variance is real in cash games and tournaments. The way we overcome variance is to put in proper volume.. Speaking from an MTT perspective - you will need to play about 100 games per month to overcome variance. The more volume you put in - in general- the better your chances of beating variance should be. I work a full time job mon-fri and I work about 2 Saturdays every month -- I average 200 games per month - this brings me to my point, that it is entirely possible to have a job and be able to achieve this, you just have to really want to do it.
If you want to play for fun and as a hobby - study all of the hand rankings and engrave them into your brain. Second, learn all of table positions - followed by CONSTANT study of all of your proper opening ranges. Third, do a little research on proper bet sizing and what it has to do with your stack depth. Fourth - dive on in and enjoy yourself - only play the stakes you can afford to lose.
The second scenario would be for someone looking to take the game seriously and try to generate some income from it even if it is only played as a hobby and recreationally.
First - if you dont know the hand rankings, table position and proper opening ranges -- study that hard until you have it down packed by memory. These are the basics, to further grow your game you MUST know these.
As you begin playing - practice good bankroll management. Never invest more than you can afford to lose as a whole. For MTTs I would recommend 100-150 buy ins of your tournament level. For cash games around 50-60 buy ins is generally acceptable for a minimum. Secondly practice good game selection - this means find the best bang for your buck structures, the softest fields - find a few games you can crush and then play them relentlessly!! I would also advise any new players to begin their journeys in the micros - the lowest level you site (or sites) of choice has to offer. If you cannot beat the worst players in the fields - moving up will only cause you to hemorrhage money. Consider it a right of passage. By all means if you can afford to dive right into $22 and $33 MTTs - have at it, but if you cant beat those little $1 games - the mid stakes fields will eat you alive. This is just the harsh reality of things.
Moving on - - Once you have the basics down -buy yourself holdem manager or poker tracker 4 -- you will need to log your hands to evaluate your play and move onto other steps to improve your game - which leads me to my next point of advice -- dedicate at least 2 days a week to studying the game.
Little point of tracker program advice - I wouldn't worry about using a HUD unless you have a pretty decent feel and understanding of the game -- trying to look at and deduce tendencies from stats will do you no good if you dont fully understand what you are looking at and why it either is or isn't important. I had pt4 for 2 years before I ever used the HUD and even today I only utilize about 6 stats.
To study and improve - you will need some sort of source to find out what is generally acceptable and what is not -- you're already here and this is a great place for most of that content. So, when you begin to study - make a list of 3 - 5 things you would like to improve on im your game -- keep them next to your PC while you play and work on those points hard until you have them down to your liking. Cross something off the list and move on until you have something new you would like to learn/improve on. We cannot evaluate our play and SEE what we are doing without the tracker programs - so this is a MUST have tool for anyone looking to take their game seriously.
Soak up all the content you can, dedicate yourself to becoming better at this game. If you do not commit, you simply will not succeed. This game is not for everyone and will test your mental fortitude on the daily basis - if you are not ready to handle that, perhaps you should play moreso for fun. The swings are real, and they happen to EVERYONE. So make sure you mentally understand what you are getting into. There are tons of great books on poker mentality and tilt. I firmly do not believe there is a "one size fits all" solution to tilt - we as humans are unique and each individual differs from the other. We may be cut from the same cloth, but we are not all the same and so I don't believe that the same solutions work for 100% of everyone else. This will be trial and error for you to find out what works best in your case.
Lastly as you improve and you imurse yourself in this game - when you finally do start winning -- and if you work hard enough, play correctly and follow the basic math (ie:: getting your money in good over and over) -- then you will win over the long term - take those winnings, be prideful and invest in yourself!! Buy another piece of helpful software like ICMizer for MTT players, or Poker Snowie for the cash grinders, etc -- these tools will only help you become even better over your journey. If you feel like you have learned all you can on your own - get coaching or sign up for a training site. Coaching was personally the best thing i ever could've done for my poker game..
Investing in yourself doesn't always have to be new things to help your poker game grow - buy yourself something nice once in a while. Buy a new monitor, a new pair of shoes, a new pc, a nice dinner, etc - its nice to reap the rewards for all of your hard work, you should be able to enjoy some of it. After all, you earned it!
I know this is long and probably a bit ranty - but overall, I hope it comes across helpful. Thanks for reading - good luck at the tables!
Edit::: One more final piece of advice -- variance is real in cash games and tournaments. The way we overcome variance is to put in proper volume.. Speaking from an MTT perspective - you will need to play about 100 games per month to overcome variance. The more volume you put in - in general- the better your chances of beating variance should be. I work a full time job mon-fri and I work about 2 Saturdays every month -- I average 200 games per month - this brings me to my point, that it is entirely possible to have a job and be able to achieve this, you just have to really want to do it.
Last edited:
Matt_Burns88
Legend
Loyaler
If I had the time, this is the post I would have written; it covers everything that a player new to the game should consider and always bear in mind.
Great post!